The area from the west Sahara through the Middle East and Central Asia to the Gobi desert is often called the “dust belt,” an expansive region where winds stir up frequent and often severe dust storms.

The dust belt consists of natural dust sources, such as the Sahara and Gobi deserts, and human-induced sources like the Aralkum, the arid and salty swathe in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan that continues to emerge as the inland Aral Sea dries. In a changing climate, the countries located in this area suffer from the dust in a variety of ways because of its negative effects on air quality, human and environmental health, and economic activity, for example. Furthermore, dust originating from sources in the dust belt does not just stay local but is also distributed by wind and weather to remote regions. It is thus important to better understand the composition, transport, and effects of the dust.

Credit: Dietrich Althausen

The first Central Asian Dust Conference (CADUC) took place recently in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, bringing together about 80 scientists from 17 countries. Four topics were addressed at the conference: dust at sources, dust in transport, dust sinks, and the impacts of dust. Six extended oral contributions presented overviews of the topics of the conference, whereas another 43 talks reported specific research results.

The first session comprised presentations of studies on dust sources, which are often made using space-based observations. Outputs of these investigations reported at the conference included new inventories of dust sources; parameters and methods for the assessment of dust sources; characteristics of recently developing sources, such as Lake Urmia in Iran; the observation that saline dust storms are becoming more frequent; dust flux estimates; and identification of dust transport pathways in western Asia.

Results reported during the second session focused on particle properties and measurements of long-range transported dust from the Sahara to East Asia; dust lofted up to heights of 11 kilometers; the mixing and aging of dust with other particles; parameters for identifying dust from remote and in situ observations and for the representation of dust in models; vertically resolved, ground-based dust measurements in Central Asia; long-term, space-based, and vertically resolved dust measurements from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) instrument, part of the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) mission; the electrostatic charging of dust during atmospheric transport; and long-range dust transport from the dust belt to places as far away as Moscow.

The dust belt (enclosed by yellow dashes) stretches from the Sahara desert in Africa to the Gobi desert in central and East Asia. Credit: Adapted from Hofer et al., 2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-14559-2017, CC BY 4.0

In the third session, participants discussed the chemical and mineralogical constituents of Central Asian dust with comparisons to Saharan dust; Aralkum as a human-made dust source; possible, although not yet identified, pathways of dust down mixing in the atmosphere; mixing of dust with particles produced through anthropogenic activity in Central Asia; and dust transported to regions west and north of Central Asia such as Georgia and Siberia.

The fourth session addressed the impacts of dust. Following a broad overview about dust hazards, several presenters examined meteorological impacts of dust resulting from its ability to serve as ice-nucleating particles and alter radiative fluxes. Additionally, speakers presented results from studies of the health impacts of dust containing toxic metals, bacterial transport over long distances aboard dust, how different dusts affect bacterial survival, and plant growth under dust-induced stress.

All abstracts from the conference are open access and are published in the conference proceedings. Conference participants agreed that future CADUC meetings should be held to follow up on this first conference.

We are very grateful to the nonprofit Volkswagen Foundation for its support of the conference.

Satellite capabilities to remotely estimate various ocean properties are continually increasing in maturity and scope. Sea surface temperature, height, and roughness; ocean vector winds; and bio-optical properties like chlorophyll concentration are now available on a routine and sustainable basis. These products are integral to operational applications for routine and event-driven environmental assessments, predictions, forecasts, and management. Yet these satellite observations are still underused, and they represent a huge potential for contributing to societal needs and the “blue economy.”

The first International Operational Satellite Oceanography (OSO) Symposium, organized and sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, was held at the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction. Approximately 150 people from 30 countries participated in the symposium. The day before the main meeting, 52 people attended an optional day of training related to satellite data processing and use.

Attendees shared ideas on how to better understand user needs and expectations, develop interoperability standards, and establish best practices that will lead to more universal use of ocean satellite data.The symposium brought together for the first time the international community of operational satellite oceanographic data and product providers and users. One intent of the symposium was to better define and understand the barriers, perceived or actual, hindering the use of satellite oceanographic observations. Another intent was to facilitate widespread incorporation of these observations into the value chain extending from their initial collection to their use across the range of operational applications.

This initial symposium, which consisted of plenary and poster sessions, focused on the upstream components of the value chain. These include the international community of satellite operators, information producers, and high- to intermediate-level users. Attendees shared ideas on how to better understand user needs and expectations, develop interoperability standards, and establish best practices that will lead to more universal use of ocean satellite data.

In the first five plenary sessions, invited speakers presented talks and answered audience questions during moderated panels. Each session loosely covered one of five themes:

After a summation of these sessions, leaders in economics, applied research, the commercial sector, and future satellite mission planning offered their perspectives on the outlook for operational satellite oceanography.

The symposium adjourned after closing remarks and recommendations. A report summarizing the symposium, the identified challenges, and suggested recommendations is in preparation.

By all accounts, the symposium was a success. It marks the beginning of a biennial tradition in which those involved at all levels of the value chain, from data providers to users, will assemble to foster the use of operational satellite oceanographic data, products, applications, and services to provide greater societal benefits. The next OSO Symposium will convene in the vicinity of Frankfurt, Germany, during late spring to early summer 2021.

Author Information

Christopher W. Brown (christopher.w.brown@noaa.gov), Center for Satellite Applications and Research, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, College Park, Md.; Veronica Lance, Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites–Maryland, University of Maryland, College Park; and François Montagner, Remote Sensing and Products Division, European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, Darmstadt, Germany

Coastlines across the globe are already experiencing the impacts of sea level rise. Many threatened areas have begun planning for, adapting to, and mitigating the effects of current and future sea level changes—and bearing the significant associated costs. Despite the advanced stages of preparing for sea level rise in some locations, planners often lack the comprehensive sea level information needed to make fully informed decisions. This lack of information results partly from unresolved scientific problems still under investigation and in part from the difficulty of translating science into something that is useful and actionable for decision-makers.

Much of the focus was on information flows from scientists to end users, with the goal of identifying ways to streamline and improve this process.To begin addressing these challenges, 50 members of NASA’s Sea Level Change Team (N-SLCT) met last March with a diverse set of stakeholders—35 in all—representing state and local governments as part of N-SLCT’s annual science team meeting. The meeting was held in Annapolis, Md., at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Philip Merrill Environmental Center. Annapolis, a U.S. coastal city, is already feeling the effects of rising seas, including dramatic increases in high-tide flooding in recent years.

The first day of the 3-day workshop featured stakeholders offering accounts of the real-world effects of sea level rise. They described the planning processes and the scientific information that are the foundation of their plans. Much of the focus was on information flows from scientists to end users, with the goal of identifying ways to streamline and improve this process.

Scientists and stakeholders also expressed interest in identifying gaps in available scientific information. N-SLCT sought answers to more specific questions as well: How is NASA science being used for coastal planning, and who is using it? How can NASA best provide useful information as these planning efforts continue?

The science team members provided updates on the significant progress in understanding the roles that ocean, ice, and land play in coastal sea level rise.These questions and the discussions that took place on the first day of the workshop were used to inform the work of N-SLCT over the remaining 2 days of the meeting. N-SLCT focuses primarily on improving understanding of present and future regional relative sea level rise. Tackling this problem requires an interdisciplinary approach, and the team’s expertise covers the broad range of factors contributing to sea level change.

The science team members provided updates on the latest scientific results, including significant progress in understanding the roles that ocean, ice, and land play in coastal sea level rise.

On the last day of the meeting, the group considered the future direction of N-SLCT. Participants identified several “team products” that will be developed over the coming months, including a set of regional sea level hindcasts and projections covering a range of timescales. They also identified the importance of further stakeholder engagement to inform future team activities; the Annapolis workshop was viewed as a first step in this direction. Further information about the meeting and team activities can be found at the N-SLCT web portal.

The research presented at this meeting was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA.

Recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as well as the United States’ National Climate Assessment, have highlighted the importance of deploying carbon removal solutions to meet our climate goals. A research agenda for studying biological and engineered solutions was the target of two recent reports from the National Academies. Yet understanding the human and societal dimensions of pursuing these possible carbon removal paths is still a nascent area of research.

A recent workshop with 50 participants from academia, nongovernmental organizations, businesses, and government was held jointly by Cornell University’s Atkinson Center, Carbon180, and the New Carbon Economy Consortium. Workshop attendees took a first step toward outlining a research agenda that more broadly integrates the social sciences, humanities, business, planning, architecture, and arts disciplines into carbon dioxide removal (CDR) research in support of a carbon-sequestering economy.

The workshop had several goals. First, it brought together researchers working across the disciplines that are critical to building the scholarship around carbon removal. Second, it sought to link socioeconomic research with that of the natural sciences and engineering to ensure that the research agenda coevolves holistically. Finally, the workshop sought to outline fundable cross-disciplinary projects that could stimulate collaboration among institutions across the United States and the world.

Cattle graze on land in Marin County in California. Changing land management practices, including on agricultural and grazing lands, is an important component of natural carbon dioxide removal mechanisms. Credit: Mira Nguyen

Introductory presentations from participants led to focused discussions on six broad research areas and identified specific questions to be addressed through integrated research.

1. Communication. How are public discourse and public opinion involving CDR different from public perceptions of other climate change solutions? Which groups (e.g., legislators, advocates, the general public) are the most critical targets for communicating about CDR?

2. Systems Transition and Social Justice. Are there historical analogues for systems transitions—the incorporation of new technology and practices into society—like the ones needed to address climate change? What systemic changes are required to deploy CDR solutions across the economy? How can we ensure that these systemic changes are socially just?

3. Policy and Governance. What policies—instituted at what level of governance—best spur CDR development and deployment? What unintended consequences of these policies can we anticipate? Does CDR require a new model for environmental policy and governance?

4. Finance and Business Models. What are the unique considerations and pathways for financing CDR relative to financing other potential solutions to climate change (e.g., mitigation or adaptation)? What are the business models that will best foster CDR development and deployment?

5. Stakeholder and Consumer Behavior. Is there demand for CDR, and how can we identify and meet that demand? How do individuals, corporations, governments, and other stakeholders assess and make decisions about CDR?

6. Design and Planning. The processes of design and planning are by nature iterative and experimental. What can we learn about implementation stumbling blocks and opportunities through the design and planning of CDR systems?

More information about the workshop and the New Carbon Economy Consortium can be found via the website of Cornell’s Reducing Climate Risk Working Group.

We thank the Atkinson Center and Carbon180 for their support of this workshop.

The Arctic has warmed about 2 to 3 times faster than the rest of world for the past several decades, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. In contrast to this rapid Arctic warming, northern continents have, in recent years, experienced prolonged cold spells and severe snow events that have had significant socioeconomic impacts, including upticks in cold-related casualties as well as lengthy shutdowns of businesses, schools, and airports that have slowed economies and left students and travelers stranded. There is thus an urgent need for better physical understanding and prediction of these winter extremes.

A debate has lingered among scientists over whether recent cold anomalies over Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes are linked with Arctic warming. One school of thought claims that reductions in Arctic sea ice have, by impacting Arctic temperatures and the polar jet stream, led to statistically robust cold anomalies over the midlatitudes. Others suggest that recent cold events are driven only by natural midlatitude climate variability rather than by changes in external forcing. Motivated by this scientific controversy, as well as by the recognition that recent cold anomalies have had a strong regional preference for East Asia, the Arctic Warming and East Asia Weather Linkage Workshop was held at the Korea Polar Research Institute in Incheon, South Korea, on 13 May 2019.

The most important and controversial questions addressed at the workshop had to do with the robustness of the relationship between Arctic warming and East Asian cold anomalies as well as potential causal mechanisms for this relationship. The following are some of the notable points that meeting participants discussed:

At least 44% of recent winter Eurasian cooling is attributable to the sea ice loss over the Barents and Kara Seas, but current state-of-the-art models underestimate East Asian cooling related to sea ice loss.
The wintertime Arctic surface warming trend is clear in this map of average winter (December-January-February) temperatures from 1990 to 2018, especially over the Barents and Kara Seas and the Chukchi Sea, whereas a strong cooling trend has prevailed over East Asia. Data in dotted areas are significant at the 95% confidence level. Units are degrees Celsius per decade. Data are from a European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts interim reanalysis. Credit: Ji-Yeon Lee/Korea Polar Research Institute

Troposphere-stratosphere coupling is critical in understanding the Arctic–East Asia weather linkage, but the processes and pathways by which this coupling occurs are not well understood.
Variations in tropical sea surface temperatures play a critical role in modulating sea ice in the Arctic, which is, in turn, one of the main drivers of midlatitude weather.
In diagnosing atmospheric responses to Arctic amplification, air pressures at sea level may not be an ideal metric. Instead, the thickness of the lower troposphere (between about 1,000 and 500 hectopascals) might be a better metric.
The linkage between Arctic warming and cold anomalies in East Asia has a multidecadal behavior—with weaker relations from 1901 to 1929 and 1955 to 1979 and stronger relations from 1930 to 1954 and 1989 to 2013—associated with long-term variations in climatological stationary waves originating from the North Atlantic.
Current coupled models suffer in simulating observed Arctic-midlatitude linkages because they include feedbacks from the ocean, which are still not well known and thus not well modeled. One needs to interpret model results with care.
The lasting effect, or memory, of changes to high-latitude land surfaces, such as increased snow cover caused by Arctic amplification, on conditions in subsequent months and years should be considered in models.
Arctic warming not only modulates winter weather but is also linked to extreme summer heat waves in East Asia. However, understanding summer Arctic–East Asia weather linkages is in an incipient stage, and the mechanism behind the summer linkage remains unclear.

This was the first meeting about the Arctic–East Asia weather linkage issue with participants from East Asian countries. The workshop led to a clearer picture of the connection between Arctic change and extreme weather in East Asia. However, many aspects of the linkage remain unclear. To continue in-depth discussions, participants agreed to plan another meeting in the near future.

Earth’s oceans are absorbing more and more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, causing ocean acidification (OA) that has harmful consequences for many marine organisms. Among other impacts, this acidification can throw food webs out of balance and negatively affect fisheries upon which humans rely.

The Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON) is an international collaboration to observe ocean acidification (OA) worldwide, identify drivers of OA and its impacts on marine ecosystems, and provide biogeochemical data to optimize OA modeling and projections.The Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON) is an international collaboration to observe OA worldwide, identify drivers of OA and its impacts on marine ecosystems, and provide biogeochemical data to optimize OA modeling and projections. Since its inception in 2012, GOA-ON has built a community of scientists through international workshops and regional training sessions intended to define priorities and approaches that advance these efforts. The 2019 international workshop, the fourth of its kind, was hosted in Hangzhou, China, by the State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics (SOED), part of the Second Institute of Oceanography within the Ministry of Natural Resources, and was attended by 270 participants from 60 countries.

The workshop had four themes: (1) ocean and coastal acidification in environments with multiple stressors (e.g., ocean warming, hypoxia, harmful algal blooms), (2) observing ocean and coastal acidification and its impacts on organisms and ecosystems, (3) regional and global modeling of physical-biogeochemical coupling processes related to OA and associated ecosystem responses, and (4) shaping GOA-ON to better meet information needs of decision-makers at both international and local levels. Two special events preceded the workshop: a workshop focused on bridging gaps between OA research and the aquaculture industry, which featured key industry representatives who emphasized the importance of OA research for aquaculture efforts, and a course that offered hands-on training with the Ocean Carbon from Space (SatCO2) software, an online platform for analysis of marine satellite and in situ data developed by SOED.

The successes of GOA-ON capacity-building efforts, with multiple training workshops to date involving researchers from 51 developing countries, were highlighted, as was the value of regional collaborative research hubs and the significant role of GOA-ON in increasing OA data availability.Science sessions highlighted observed biological responses to OA from field and laboratory investigations; the large differences in the time of emergence of acidification signals between the open ocean (roughly 10–15 years) and coastal waters (roughly 20–40 years); and the importance of measuring data of two qualities, “climate” data of sufficient precision and accuracy to observe long-term trends in seawater conditions and “weather” data that are less stringent but adequate to meet the needs of industry and understand ecosystem responses on shorter timescales. The successes of GOA-ON capacity-building efforts, with multiple training workshops to date involving researchers from 51 developing countries, were also highlighted, as was the value of regional collaborative research hubs and the significant role of GOA-ON in increasing OA data availability through its data portal and through the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14.3.1 reporting process. Dialogues about OA and hypoxia models from around the world helped workshop participants establish priority needs for ongoing modeling activities, such as maintaining long-term, repeated observations and measuring OA variables along with hydrodynamic and biological variables. Discussions of policy issues identified core needs for policy makers, including the need to focus on a broad range of issues related to ocean health (not only OA) and to involve more perspectives in decision-making, including industry, through the coproduction of projects such as risk assessments.

Overall, the workshop reinforced key tenets of GOA-ON and priorities for the future: (1) Conducting ocean and coastal acidification research involving chemical and biological observation, experimentation, and modeling considering multiple-stressor environments advances understanding of OA. (2) Integrating observational and modeling research speeds progress in both. (3) Assessing how OA is influenced by both natural and anthropogenic processes enables development of effective responses. (4) Collaborating and sharing data and lessons learned with other ocean programs leverage information and maximize understanding. (5) Expanding capacity-building efforts in underrepresented regions and incorporating more training on data management and analysis grow the global OA knowledge base, and (6) communicating and coproducing research across different fields and sectors of society, including social scientists and industry, to assess social and economic vulnerabilities facilitate progress on mitigation and adaptation.

The GOA-ON implementation strategy was released at the workshop to provide guidance on implementing the network’s goals. Parties interested in contributing to the advancement of OA research can find details on joining the effort on the GOA-ON website.